By Crime Historian Laura James, Esquire (c) 2005-14 WELCOME to my study of historic true crime, a literary blog where the chairs rest at the intersection of history, journalism, law, and murder, and the shelves are filled with the finest true crime literature. STEAL FROM THIS LIBRARY AND IT'S PISTOLS AT DAWN.

Welcome to the annual true crime book club link-a-thon! I am dusting off my blog again to share the plethora of links my faithful correspondents have sent me and that I've selfishly hoarded hitherto. If you like stories of history, journalism, law, and murder, in other words the true crime genre, easily the best invention to come out of the sixteenth century [sic - for the Truman Capote zealots], below are stories and books in the theme. If you have any links, books, or reviews to share, please do!

You're also not the only otherwise sane person to admit to liking true crime books. Governor Susana Martinez recently plugged the genre for schoolchildren.

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The Wall Street Journal offers nice coverage of our favorite literary genre. In its pages true crime gets its due. Lately it's offered some good links in the theme. Author Daniel Stashower (whose book got a nice nod from the N.Y. Times) got hooked on true crime at thirteen. The WSJ also likedMidnight in Peking by Paul French.

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Over the last few months I've followed a civil suit in Washington state. Author Ann Rule took the local newspaper, the Seattle Weekly, to task with a libel suit that I for one thought appeared to be well founded. Though I don't know the niceties of that state's laws, I've handled a few libel cases; she looked to me to have a case. Surprisingly, her case got thrown out. More. And more. Even more. So the queen of the genre is moving on -- here's an Ann Rule interview about her next book on Russel Douglas.

NewspaperArchiveMy most very favorite site on the internet. Millions of digitized, text-searchable newspapers from across the U.S. and the world. If my computer somehow froze up and I had access to only one website, this would be it.

Paper of Record Another pay-to-play website that features searchable historic newspapers. Canada is particularly well represented in its collection.